Review: Atrium String Quartet

Mar 18 2008 by Our Correspondent, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

EXTRAVAGANT technical gifts coupled with youthful fire led the Atrium String Quartet into adopting some fiendishly fast tempos.

This was particularly the case with the final movement of the Mozart Quartet in B flat which opened the concert.

It is a movement marked allegro assai, but it was played prestissimo. This resulted in some loss of clarity.

ŠSo was this an error of musical judgement, or the product of sheer exuberance?

The former can be ruled out, in view of the fact that this young Russian quartet displayed exceptional musical intelligence throughout the concert.

The Atriums, who were making their second appearance for Huddersfield Music Society within two years, followed the Mozart with Haydn’s Quartet in F opus 77 no 2.

The andante movement was beautifully played and the humour in the minuet, with its quirky stops and starts, came out well. It was almost as if the musicians were sharing an in-joke.

The main point of interest at the concert, however, was to hear how these prodigiously talented young players would interpret the music of their countryman Shostakovich, whose works are endlessly analysed by musicologists in search of political and psychological sub-texts.

Last night we heard the Quartet no 3 in F, which has some of the composer’s more approachable string quartet writing – a jaunty theme at the beginning of the last movement, for example – coupled with some of his deepest angst. The Atrium quartet showed a profound understanding of all the work’s moods and complexities, right through to the haunting held note that concluded the performance.